


Eye of the Beholder

by Argyle



Category: Dead Like Me
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-19
Updated: 2007-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some search, others see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye of the Beholder

By the time George and Betty left the bar, it was well past midnight. The pavement was wet with rain, oil-slick and glittering, and George struggled to catch her bearings. “It’s that way,” she said, pointing vaguely to the right.  
  
“Are you sure?” Betty asked, turning round to check her reflection in a shop window.  
  
“Sure I’m sure.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
George narrowed her eyes. “Why? Where do you think it’s at?”  
  
“This is _your_ reap, Toilet Seat. You’ve got to follow your own instincts.”  
  
“Right. So do you think it’s down that way?”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Okay,” Betty said again, and straightened her cap. She looked at George quite closely; it wasn’t a frown which creased her brow, but it was close enough, and the implication was just the same. Almost impatiently, she reached out to brush an unseen piece of lint from George’s shoulder, her fingers warm and steady through the fabric of George’s jacket. “How many did you have, anyway?”  
  
George shrugged. “A few.”  
  
“Before or after the piano player pulled the gun?”  
  
“A few before, a few after.”  
  
Betty rolled her eyes. “We used to keep at it until there was nothing left but bathtub gin. Then, by the time we were sober again, the gin didn’t look so bad,” she said. “That was before people knew much about liver damage, so the hardest part was getting it down. It’s a wonder we ever saw the light of day.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So you’ve _got_ to learn to hold your liquor.”  
  
“I’m fine,” George protested, pushing her hair back from her face as they started forward. “Look, you really don’t have to come along. I can handle this. I don’t need a chaperone.”  
  
“Funny that Rube thinks otherwise. Hate to have another incident, and if he blows a gasket, where will _we_ be?”  
  
“But that was weeks ago! What does he want, a written apology?”  
  
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Betty said wryly, a smile crinkling the corners of her mouth. “You know, one thing you have to keep in mind about Rube--”  
  
“That a beetle’s been caught up his ass since the Pleistocene era?”  
  
“He cares about you.”  
  
“Right. He cares enough to give me an appointment for the middle of the night and halfway across town from my apartment. I’ll sell the film rights to Lifetime. Fuck, this should count for today _and_ tomorrow.”  
  
“It’s Tuesday night: what else could you possibly be doing?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know. Sleeping, maybe?”  
  
Betty sighed, but didn’t reply. The click of her heels echoed against the surrounding buildings, only to be occasionally muffled by the distant sound of car wheels tracing through new puddles. George pushed her hands into her pockets, and scowled as she noticed the presence of her post-it.  
  
“I think Torrance Avenue is the next one up,” she said glumly.  
  
“What’s the number?”  
  
“2415. Who’s even out at this hour?”  
  
“Besides us?” Betty asked. “Could be anyone: cop, street cleaner, jogger...”  
  
“ _Jogger?_ ”  
  
“Drug dealer, delivery boy, pilot... Or a musician getting off from a gig. Could be someone who just wants to get away for a while.”  
  
But it wasn’t. George stared through the plate-glass of 2415 Torrance Avenue, where one long mirrored wall was lined with salon chairs, the other with sinks and hairdryers. At the back there stood several vats of styling products, and beside them sat a young woman, her head crowned with curlers. She flipped through the pages of a glossy magazine, and then through a textbook.  
  
George’s stomach lurched. The last hour’s drinks had fallen prey to reaper metabolism, but her thoughts were still muzzy and irritated. She assured herself she’d got past the initial stages of the ‘Why me?’ phase, and that several months on the job had toughened her sensibilities, but she was still left with the familiar echo of discontentment. The sidewalk before her was cast in day-glo pink from the sign above: _Curl Up and Dye_.  
  
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
  
“I think it’s cute,” said Betty, not meeting George’s eye. “And anyway, didn’t it used to be _Charming Chuck’s Cheap Cuts_?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know.”  
  
“That was twenty years ago. Lovers’ quarrel. Place doesn’t exactly have a good track record, though,” Betty said matter-of-factly and knocked on the window, jostling the plastic _CLOSED_ placard. The woman inside looked up abruptly, craned her neck to take in the sight of them, and made her way across the room.  
  
“Hi,” Betty chirped as the door swung open. “Are you the owner?”  
  
The woman glanced between them. “No, I’m a student,” she said. And then: “Sammy won’t be in until next week. What’s this about?”  
  
“I was here earlier today,” Betty swung her hair over her shoulder ostentatiously, “ and I seem to have left something behind.”  
  
“What was it?”  
  
“See, that’s the problem. I can’t quite remember. One moment I was up to my ears in shampoo, and the next I was out the door. Everything else is something of a blur.”  
  
“Ow!” George rubbed her side and glared at the retreating form of Betty’s elbow. She took a deep breath before chiming in, “Selective memory. There was an accident involving a tractor-trailer full of Volvos a few years back. She hasn’t been the same since.”  
  
“God, how awful,” the woman said, her eyes widening. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Betty nodded eagerly. “I wanted to come back before it slipped my mind completely, and we happened to be in the neighborhood,” she said. “So, do you have a lost and found or something?”  
  
And they did.  
  
While Betty picked through the contents of a large cardboard box, George skirted the room in search of a name. Of course, there were plenty to be had, but she somehow supposed Vidal Sassoon wouldn’t fit the bill; when she glanced at the title page of the woman’s Advanced Cosmology course guide, it was as though it had been waiting for her all along. There was no need to check the post-it.  
  
“Any luck?” Betty asked, and held up a pair of imitation designer sunglasses.  
  
George arched a brow. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”  
  
“Depends.”  
  
“On what?”  
  
Betty dropped the glasses back into the box, smiled, and said, “Who’s listening.” And then, to S. W. Cathcart: “I don’t think it’s here.”  
  
“Oh,” the woman replied. “How did you know something was missing in the first place?”  
  
“Just one of those things. You know, they say lionesses instinctively know when something’s gone astray in her den. She hones in on the vibe of the place, and then concentrates until she figures out what it is.”  
  
“Uh, Betty?” George ventured, and glanced at her watch.  
  
“It’s like that for me, only with Versace in place of the cubs, and my wardrobe in place of the large, jutting rock surrounded by scrubby vegetation.” Betty sighed and shook her head. “It’s a curse.”  
  
After that, everything worked like clockwork: Betty shook S. W. Cathcart’s hand out of friendliness, and George to take her soul.  
  
“Sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for. I mean, if you come back tomorrow, you can check to see if the day staff turns anything up...”  
  
“Thanks. Say, what _are_ you doing here so late?”  
  
“Studying,” the woman said, skillfully adjusting an errant curl, and glanced over her shoulder. “My final’s in two days.”  
  
Betty nodded sympathetically. Then she pulled out her Polaroid camera. “Happy thoughts.”  
  
They let themselves out, but left the door unlatched by a hairsbreadth. The young woman returned to her books, hefted them to a side table, and took a seat beneath the gleaming dome of a perm steamer. A graveling was there to meet her.  
  
Five, four, three...  
  
The lights flickered with an electrical surge.  
  
...two, one.  
  
“You know, she was about your age,” Betty said, and pushed open the door.  
  
George didn’t try to hide her scowl. “I hadn’t noticed.”  
  
Eventually the woman who was S. W. Cathcart vanished in the flash and glare of a thousand spectral paparazzi, and eventually Betty resumed her quest to reach the bottom of the lost and found.  
  
“You’d think people would come back for their keys,” she murmured, jingling a set and then tossing it to the floor. “I mean, where do they go?”  
  
George patted her pocket with a sudden burst of circumspect pride. “Lock picking is a lost art form. And practical.”  
  
“Mm. Mason would be pleased to hear you say that.”  
  
“I knew how to pick locks before.”  
  
“Before?”  
  
“Before...” George trailed off. Before what? Before she’d been struck down by astral garbage? “Before it became a necessity. I was into the whole stage magic thing as a kid. Paper flowers, rings, card tricks... Even tried to lock myself in my grandmother’s trunk.”  
  
“How’d that work out for you?”  
  
“Well, my mom had a shit-fit, if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
Betty nodded distractedly and glanced through the empty pouches of a faux-crocodile skin wallet. “We’re not the first to’ve been here,” she said.  
  
“Reapers, you mean?”  
  
“Treasure hunters.”  
  
The wallet plunked to the bottom of the box, and was swiftly followed by three chartreuse scarves, a pair of red leather gloves, and a can of Aqua Net. Betty stood up, looked about, and proceeded to rifle through a beautician’s bureau.  
  
“Oh, come on,” George laughed. “You didn’t really expect to find anything, did you?”  
  
“I once came upon a mother-of-pearl cigarette case at the Boston Library.”  
  
“Recently?”  
  
Betty examined several tubes of lipstick. “No,” she said. And then, holding one up to the light: “What do you think? Too dark? Too dramatic?”  
  
“Looks like something you’d wear to a funeral.”  
  
“Should come in handy. Ooh. This has you written all over it.”  
  
George checked the label. “Georgia Peach,” she murmured. “Great.”  
  
“It’ll match your complexion. Here. Go like this.” Betty puckered her lips and waited until George reluctantly followed suit. Carefully, carefully, she drew the color around George’s mouth. “You know, my apartment’s just around the corner from here.”  
  
“Good for you.”  
  
“Keep still! There. You can have the den.”  
  
“I thought you didn’t let anyone couch surf.”  
  
“That’s right. I don’t. But the carpet’s extra-plush, and I may just have an extra blanket or two in the closet.”


End file.
